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To: metacognative
Still no example of one fossil transitioning into another. Yet according to darwinite myth, all fossils should blend back toward the tree trunk.

How many times do I have to catch one guy on one afternoon?

Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record.

Here's one relevant section among several:

Moving further up the taxonomic hierarchy, the condylarths and primitive carnivores (creodonts, miacids) are very similar to each other in morphology (Fig. 9, 10), and some taxa have had their assignments to these orders changed. The Miacids in turn are very similar to the earliest representatives of the Families Canidae (dogs) and Mustelidae (weasels), both of Superfamily Arctoidea, and the Family Viverridae (civets) of the Superfamily Aeluroidea. As Romer (1966) states in Vertebrate Paleontology (p. 232), "Were we living at the beginning of the Oligocene, we should probably consider all these small carnivores as members of a single family." This statement also illustrates the point that the erection of a higher taxon is done in retrospect, after sufficient divergence has occurred to give particular traits significance.

Figure 10. Comparison of skulls of the early ungulates (condylarths) and carnivores. (A) The condylarth Phenacodus possessed large canines as well as cheek teeth partially adapted for herbivory. (B) The carnivore-like condylarth Mesonyx. The early Eocene creodonts (C) Oxyaena and (D) Sinopa were primitive carnivores apparently unrelated to any modern forms. (E) The Eocene Vulpavus is a representative of the miacids which probably was ancestral to all living carnivore groups. (From Vertebrate Paleontology by Alfred Sherwood Romer published by The University of Chicago Press, copyright © 1945, 1966 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This material may be used and shared with the fair-use provisions of US copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires both the consent of the authors and the University of Chicago Press.)

Miller is saying precisely that the farther back one explores along a branch, the more a thing looks like its contemporaries on other branches. IOW, the branches visibly reconverge as one approaches the branch point, exactly the thing you said doesn't happen.

We see this at least as well in dinosaurs and birds, for instance, where the convergence (as you go back in time) produces specimens almost completely ambiguous whether they should be lumped in the "bird" or "dinosaur" bin.

The things you're saying aren't true. Why doesn't that matter?

242 posted on 01/18/2005 2:48:12 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro; metacognative
The things you're saying aren't true. Why doesn't that matter?

See my #220. M was nailed and he won't even apologize.

244 posted on 01/18/2005 2:51:25 PM PST by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: VadeRetro

I know you want to believe those skulls are relate somehow. Maybe they are, where's the proof? We've had a century and a half to find an existing 'halfway' species.
All we see in the real world are discrete familiies.


246 posted on 01/18/2005 2:54:44 PM PST by metacognative (follow the gravy...)
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To: VadeRetro
The preceding passage in the same source if anything nails it even better than the quote I originally offered.

The significance of the fossil record of horses becomes clearer when it is compared with that of the other members of the order Perissodactyla ("odd-toed ungulates"). The fossil record of the extinct titanotheres is quite good (Fig. 7), and the earliest representatives of this group are very similar to "Eohippus" (Stanley, 1974; Mader, 1989). Likewise, the earliest members of the tapirs and rhinos were very "Eohippus"-like. Thus, the different perissodactyl groups can be traced back to a group of very similar small generalized ungulates (Radinsky, 1979; Prothero, et al., 1989; Prothero & Schoch, 1989) (Fig. 8). But this is not all; the most primitive ungulates (hoofed mammals) are the condylarths, which are assemblages of forms transitional in character between the insectivores and true ungulates (Fig. 9). Some genera and families of the condylarths had been previously assigned to the Insectivora, Carnivora, and even Primates (Romer, 1966). Thus, the farther you go back in the fossil record, the more difficult it is to place species in their "correct" higher taxonomic group. The boundaries of taxa become blurred.


272 posted on 01/18/2005 4:17:18 PM PST by VadeRetro
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